


Flickers and Blood

by icebucky



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Destiel - Freeform, F/M, M/M, Ruby 2.0, idk i like her, ruby comes back, samruby - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 22:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3335945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icebucky/pseuds/icebucky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when demons die? If monsters go to Purgatory, what happens to angels and demons? </p>
<p>She finds it surprising that the great Winchester brothers have never bothered to figure this out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Of course, Sam didn't know the finer details, but Ruby always knew there'd be a way back.

He knew exorcism, he knew stabbing with the knife, he knew the fancy mindwork that she'd coached him in during Dean's time downstairs. Sam was good. She'd taught a good number of people during her day, but Sam Winchester... Oh, he was something else.

Still, she was surprised he'd never even stopped to wonder what happened to demons when they died.

With humans, it was a different story. They died, they went to heaven or they went to hell. The laws of the fucking churches were overrated; if you were a generally good person, even if you did some bad shit, you'd make it to heaven. The  _Winchester brothers_ made it to heaven, so if you lived a nice life without any mass murders, you were probably good.

As she knew from experience, the only time anyone ever really went to hell was when they slaughtered, raped, abused, or dealt with demons. Which is where demons came from, if the human souls were lucky enough to survive the process.

Dean, she knew, had learned about what happened to the monsters they ganked after the life had bled out of their bodies. It seemed like everyone ended up there, except for demons. And angels, but Ruby had no desire to know what happened to them.

She guessed, after Dean stabbed her and her red light flickered out, that she ended up in hell for demons. You would think that Papa Lucifer would do her a favor and yank her out of the pit for all the work she did for him, but it was almost more peaceful to watch the apocalypse unfold as a spectator.

Unlike actual hell, it was more... blank. There was really nothing, no torture, no interaction. It was like watching the world on television, only she couldn't change the channel. After six years, she'd become decent at redirecting the focus of her vision, and she spent most of her time following the Winchesters. God, you'd think that Dean had never said anything bad about her from the way he'd embraced being a demon, but as Ruby recalled, back in the day, he'd treated her like shit.

_"She's a demon, Sam, period! They want us dead, we want them dead!"_

Fucking hypocrite.

But after enough time in the pit, Ruby was starting to get restless. She'd heard rumors somewhere along the demon grapevine that there  _was_ a way out, if you knew who to ask. Well, she'd had enough. If Sam and Dean could figure out how to constantly come back from the dead, when there was supposedly no way, she could too.

After all, she'd misled Sam for two years, and he had no idea until the deed was already done. Sure, sometimes she felt bad, but mostly she was incredibly proud of it. She knew that Sam's feelings for her had reverted to hatred the minute he fully understood what she had done to him, but that was okay.

It hurt, but it was okay.

Nonetheless, Ruby was done with this shit hole, and it was time to bust out. After all, if the Winchesters could do it, she sure as hell could too.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean parked at a gas station, grabbing Sam's shoulder and shaking him a little to wake him up. "Hey," he said, shutting off the car.

Sam inhaled sharply, blinking in the harsh lights of the building. "Why're we stopped?"

"I gotta pee," Dean answered, opening the door. Sam sat up straighter, mimicking his brother's motions. "You need anything?"

"Nah," Sam said, his voice still slightly choked on sleep. "I'm good." Dean nodded and headed inside, leaving Sam to stretch.

He brought his hands over his head, linking his fingers as far towards the stars as he could reach, bending at the waist from side to side. It was nice to just attempt to loosen his body like that, even though he was sure he looked ridiculous. It didn’t matter. Sam was past that.

He jumped when he heard a voice behind him choke, "Sam."

Sometimes, Sam regretted all the training that John had put he and his brother through. The lack of a childhood, moving around, the knowledge that Dean had learned to shoot a gun when he was six years old, the fact that Sam knew how to break choke holds and swindle the law and forge federal documentation. God, sometimes he wanted John to still be alive so that he could beat the shit out of him for stealing any ounce of normalcy that the brothers could have ever had.

But right now, he was exponentially glad that he never went anywhere without a gun in his waistband and that his reflexes were sharp enough to get it out and facing the person behind him in two seconds flat.

It took him a few more seconds to understand what he was seeing.

Sam's thoughts were punctuated by Dean's exclamation of "What the fuck?"

His mind was a blur, there was no way that this was possible, there was literally no fucking way, she was dead, and this is the kind of dead that people didn’t come back from. Unless they did. In which case, their world had just turned entirely upside fucking down, and the lore had no more permanence. Fuck.

The only thing he could get out was her name. "Ruby?"

She was standing three feet away from him, in the same clothes she had died in, the same body, even though they had left her there to rot with a knife wound in her belly and the demon light flickering out of her. She looked exactly the same, but paler, more exhausted, like she had just run a marathon to get to him.

She was barefoot.

Sam's attention dropped down to her feet (wasn’t she cold?) for a fraction of a second, before he disciplined himself and refined his aim, directing the potential shot into her head.

He held as Dean walked up. "W-what in the holy…" his brother said, trailing off and coming to stand next to Sam. There was a bag of chips in his hand, completely forgotten as he stared at the girl in front of them.

"Yeah, I have no idea," Sam replied, not taking his eyes off her. He didn’t need to look at Dean to know that his expression would be one of horror mixed with utter confusion.

Ruby was staring at them, one eyebrow raised and her chin jutted a little forward, like how she used to when they did something stupid. "You boneheads gonna let me explain, or are we just gonna stare at each other for the next few hours?"

"Uh," Dean said intelligently, before stepping forward quickly and grabbing her by her leather-clad shoulder. "Get in the back. Don’t touch anything."

"Dean," Sam admonished, sighing through his nose lightly. "We can't just - do you even remember what happened?"

"Yeah, I remember," Dean answered over the roof of the Impala, about to get in. "We just need to hold her until we get back to the bunker, okay? Then we can stick her in Crowley's old digs until we figure out whatever the fuck happened."

"Dean, she's the reason I raised Lucifer," Sam replied, as though that sentence summed up all the shit that had gone down because of her.

Dean's eyebrows crinkled. "Are you still pissed because you fucked her and she turned on you?" Sam scoffed, about to brush off the accusation, but Dean cut him off. "No, Sam, don’t make it personal. You make it personal, and she'll manipulate you. Again. We can't have that." When his brother tried to object, Dean barreled on, "Look, worst case, we find a way to kill her permanently and be done with it. God knows we need one less murderous bitch in our lives. But hey - best case, she helps us to find a way to make sure other demons don’t come back, and then we kill her permanently and be done with it."

"Dean, I just -"

"Sam," Dean said forcefully, wishing he could reach across the roof of the car and grab his brother's face, forcing him to look him in the eyes and listen. "Trust me on this."

Sam rolled his eyes and looked away, rubbing at his nose. "Fine. I guess. You gonna call Cas?"

Dean laughed, the kind that meant he wasn’t actually amused at all. "Oh, yeah. It'll be a fuckin' reunion. Just like the good old days." He got into the car and started the engine.


End file.
